The gaming industry depends upon player participation. Players are generally “hopeful” players who either think they are lucky or at least think they can get lucky—for a relatively small investment to play a game, they can get a disproportionately large return. To create this feeling of luck, a gaming apparatus relies upon an internal or external random element generator to generate one or more random elements such as random numbers. The gaming apparatus determines a game outcome based, at least in part, on the one or more random elements.
A significant technical challenge is to improve the operation of gaming apparatus and games played thereon, including the manner in which they leverage the underlying random element generator, by making them yield a negative return on investment in the long run (via a high quantity and/or frequency of player/apparatus interactions) and yet random and volatile enough to make players feel they can get lucky and win in the short run. Striking the right balance between yield versus randomness and volatility to create a feeling of luck involves addressing many technical problems, some of which can be at odds with one another. This luck factor is what appeals to core players and encourages prolonged and frequent player participation.
Another significant technical challenge is to improve the operation of gaming apparatus and games played thereon by increasing processing speed and efficiency of usage of processing and/or memory resources. To make games more entertaining and exciting, they often offer the complexities of advanced graphics and special effects, multiple bonus features with different game formats, and multiple random outcome determinations per feature. The game formats may, for example, include picking games, reel spins, wheel spins, and other arcade-style play mechanics. Inefficiencies in processor execution of the game software can slow down play of the game and prevent a player from playing the game at their desired pace.
Additionally, there exists the technical challenge to push the envelope of familiar gaming apparatus and games played thereon by employing technological components in unconventional ways to present the advanced graphics, enhanced audio presentations, and innovative game formats to a wider audience, measured in both variety and numbers. Expanding game play of the current generation of innovative games to multiple players and augmenting its presentation beyond a standalone EGM or bank of EGMs may enhance both the financial viability of the gaming industry and the entertainment value of the gaming experience. For example, when multi-player games are conducted via electronic display devices (as opposed to conventional table-type games with a live dealer/croupier/boxman), game play may become repetitive and lifeless due in part to the homogeneity of the programmed visual and audio presentations. One approach to providing a greater range of interactive game-play situations would be to increase the number of stored game-play scenarios—such as different viewpoints of each event for each individual player. Even if this approach did not present any insurmountable technical hurdles, the higher development costs, increased memory storage requirements, and heavy processing overhead required to create and execute separate game-play scenarios for each player (or position) may be prohibitively expensive. However, the instant invention overcomes these constraints by augmenting the variety and distinctiveness of the individual player interactions without significantly increasing the storage requirements necessary to operate the game amongst the multiple players.
As the industry matures, the creativity and ingenuity required to improve such operation of gaming apparatus and games grows accordingly.